By Vestnik Kavkaza
The head of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), Usmon Gozi, stated that his terrorist organization has joined the terrorists of Islamic State, a source in the Uzbek law-enforcement agencies told RIA Novosti. According to the source, the IMU has intensified recruitment and training of militants in regions near the Pakistani and Afghan borders. Today experts try to realize whether the IS is obviously evil or a unique project that is building a new political structure of Islam. The problem of political Islam is acute again today.
During his speech at the UN General Assembly, Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu stated that political Islam was the main threat to the world: “We look around and see that radical Islam threatens us; not the Islamic religion, but radical political Islam.”
According to Said Kyamilev, the director of the Islamic Civilization Institute, “Muslims made an awful mistake when they let political Islam trap them. It happened after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Remember Margaret Thatcher said: we have coped with one enemy, the next enemy is Islam. Thus, a great phenomenon of world history was relegated to the level of a political party, even though it is global. Of course Islam is higher than this. So I support the idea of separation of the political factor and Islamic ideology.”
Pyotr Stegny, Orientalist, an expert of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policies, says: “We all understood that the Islamists in the Middle East played a serious role, but everybody was sure that political Islam would provide a positive and constructive function at another stage of modernization changes which were started by the Arab spring. After the events of July 3rd 2013 in Egypt, when the Muslim Brotherhood was deprived of power, it became clear that there were no chances of counting on moderate Islamists at that stage. However, what is political Islam? I don’t mean terrorism. Terrorism has no religious differences, landmarks. When we speak about Islamic State, we mean a terrorist group.”
“After the dissolution of the Soviet Union we saw a collapse of a leftist alternative to the market economy and the main system of neo-liberal values which are exported by the West together with democracy to the countries of the Third World, the Islamic world. In general, democracy has a universal character; it is a way of self-organization of a society. The West was enthusiastic about its victory, as they called it, in the Cold War. And it promotes the system of neo-liberal values which contradict the traditional values of the East,” Stegny thinks.
According to him, such phenomena as Conchita Wurst (an Austrian singer and travesty, the winner of Eurovision 2014 in Copenhagen, who created the image of a bearded woman) are not acceptable for the East. “It is not due to their excessive Puritanism, which is typical for the Wahhabis of the Islamic State, but due to the fact that such an approach destroys the crystal lattice of Oriental society, the strict internal structure which has always relied on family and family values. In the Islamic world the law of self-preservation operates when European values are tried to be promoted, postmodern values. Postindustrial values in the traditional environment. Conflict is inevitable. This should be clear to the people who plan policies in this direction,” Stegny is sure.
